Thursday, September 11, 2008

DURYEA, Pa.--At a campaign event here Friday, Barack Obama ran headlong into the one of the issues that dogs him in this battleground state.

"There are rumors going around that . . . you're going to take away our guns," said Joan O'Neil, a resident of tiny Susquehanna in northeastern Pennsylvania, a big-time area for hunting.

This gun issue that Obama has tried to deftly navigate throughout this long campaign and one that damaged him here in his primary fight with Hillary Clinton. And it's one that could do even him even further harm in the general election, as he is matched against a pro-gun ticket that includes a vice-presidential nominee who has been photographed firing an assault rifle....Obama has said that he supports the Supreme Court decision last June that held the Second Amendment establishes an individual right to own a firearm, although the full parameters of that ruling have yet to be explored. The ruling invalidated Washington, D.C.'s total ban on handgun ownership and has jeopardized other bans, including one in Chicago. Obama's campaign has not said whether he supports overturning the Chicago handgun ban, which is strongly backed by the city's mayor, Richard Daley. [emphasis added]...

Article here. We can probably count on the corrupt mainstream media to avoid asking basic policy questions of their boss Chosen One, such as: "In light of the Supreme Court's Heller decision, do you support Chicago's handgun ban?"

A woman in the crowd told Obama she had “heard a rumor” that he might be planning some sort of gun ban upon being elected president. Obama trotted out his standard policy stance, that he had a deep respect for the “traditions of gun ownership” but favored measures in big cities to keep guns out of the hands of “gang bangers and drug dealers’’ in big cities “who already have them and are shooting people.”

“If you’ve got a gun in your house, I’m not taking it,’’ Obama said. But the Illinois senator could still see skeptics in the crowd, particularly on the faces of several men at the back of the room.

So he tried again. "Even if I want to take them away, I don’t have the votes in Congress," he said. "This can’t be the reason not to vote for me. Can everyone hear me in the back? I see a couple of sportsmen back there. I’m not going to take away your guns." [emphasis added]

Sounds like Senator Obama has already given some thought to whether he'd have the votes needed to "take away your guns". Of course, with the Dems expected to gain seats in Congress (and more ominously, a 60 vote majority in the Senate), a Prez O might indeed have the needed votes.